52 
SCENES IN INDIA, 
CHAPTER V. 
In India, no less than in Turkey and Persia, every 
Mohammedan of rank prides himself upon the number 
of those unhappy victims of his pleasures, which 
crowd his haram, where they live in a state of 
splendid misery, their lives being a vassalage of de- 
grading pomp and meretricious splendour. Here the 
pure impulses of affection seldom or never elevate the 
heart, but passions of the basest kind are generated 
and fostered in this prison-house of gorgeous but re- 
volting sensuality. Even the favourites enjoy no 
higher pleasure than the most neglected : on the con- 
trary, being objects of envy and hatred to the rest of 
their enslaved companions, they are exposed to the 
continual effects of those passions, so that their lives 
are one perpetual scene of vexation and disturbance. 
The more they are distinguished by the master of their 
earthly destinies, the less they are regarded by the 
inthralled community among whom they are doomed 
to dwell ; and consequently there is little enticement 
to court the favour of him for the gratification of 
whose depraved appetites they are incarcerated for the 
term of their natural lives, in youth caressed, in their 
maturer years neglected, and in age despised. 
